DO BIRDS SLEEP?

Birds sleep, but they have a unique ability to decide whether to keep half of their brain awake or let the whole mind go to sleep. Under risky circumstances, birds sleep with one eye open to protect themselves from predators. Birds direct the part of the brain that is awake to the peeping eye so that they can quickly get away when a predator approaches.

Female Northern Pintail (Anasacuta) in deep sleep. Under risky circumstances, birds sleep with one eye open.
Female Northern Pintail (Anasacuta)
Sleeping Flamingos. Birds have a unique ability to keep half of their brain awake while they sleep.
Sleeping Flamingos

According to CNN, birds can control wakefulness and sleep in different parts of the brain at the same time. Interestingly, birds such as swifts that spend most of their time on the wing sleep while in flight and are not blown off course by wind currents.

Recent posts

Diploptera punctuate cockroach's milk offers four times more nutrients than a cow's milk.

August 10, 2018
Wolf spiders prefer green color shades because it is more comfortable for them to catch prey and mate against green backgrounds.

August 8, 2018
Wrens are songbirds found in Australia, which are able to learn the language of other neighbors. Researchers taught the birds to recognize two previously unknown sounds to them as distress calls by playing them in conjunction with the wrens' alarm call, which the wrens associated with danger. After three days, the birds run for cover when they heard the strange sound they learned.

August 5, 2018

August 1, 2018
A lizard can shed off its tail when in danger.

July 29, 2018
Wolf spiders that live in the Arctic tundra enjoy eating the springtails, but spiders lose appetite them during summer the temperatures are warmer. The springtails feed on fungus, which in turn decomposes melting land matter to form form carbon dioxide and methane. The two gases are responsible to global warming, which means that the more wolf spiders feed on alternative food sources the better for global warming.

July 27, 2018

Sign up to receive our weekly articles in your inbox!

Enter your name and email address below to subscribe.

Picks for you

The New Caledonian crow (Corvus Moneduloides) makes tools and uses them to access food in difficult to get to places.

How does the Hawaiian crow use tools to extract prey from crevices?

The Flicker woodpecker of Canada was observed to retire from its activities at exactly 3:35 each afternoon.

How are birds able to tell the time?

Related posts

common swift eating while on the wing.

Why are swifts not blown away by wind while they sleep?